"Government of the people, by the people, and for the people was a purely American invention."
Invented by men raised and educated in the Anglo, European Enlightenment tradition. Did you know that Voltaire and Jeffereson corresponded by letters?
I'm not trying to be rude, just to throw that out. I just think there is a fundamental disagreement on the role of theory in reality.
Without theory, in my opinion, nothing can happen in reality. It was John Locke's theory, among other European enlightenment writers, that influenced Thomas Jefferson.
And the French sounding names? Do you not know your history?
Why is it that we Americans are so ashamed of our Englightenment past/roots? It is always brushed aside, clearly downplayed if even mentioned. Why, is it too European for us rugged American individualists? It was one the greatest ages in history, that saw the two greatest Revolutions (American and French), Frederick the Great, Kant and Adam Smith, among so many other great men and achivements. Why shouldn't we be proud of the roots of our country's great and noble ideals? Why Jefferson is one of the Englightenment Greats! Why must we be ashamed?
The American Revolution was one of the best things to ever happen in history, the French one of the worst. Most of the unpleasant history of the past 200 years can be traced directly to the influence of the French Revolutiion, including both Fascism and Nazism.
The reason is that the French Revolution, as with almost all other revolutions since, which largely imitate it and repeat its mistakes, had unlimited goals. They were going to solve all mankind's problems. All they had to do to accomplish this was to put unlimited power into the right hands. The conflict ever since between different revolutionary visions was not over whether this basic paradigm was accurate, but over which ideology and ruling group would constitute the "right hands."
The American Revolution, OTOH, did not intent to solve all problems in America, much less the world, but only to set up a process by which the American people could rule themselves and nonviolently replace bad leaders when they chose.
It thus for the first time in history set up a government which operated on the expressed principle of leaving "ordinary people" alone to lead their own lives as they saw fit.
This is an enormously greater change than all other revolutions, which essentially had the goal of changing one group of "rulers" for another. The American Rev has so far been just about the only one which had the goal of getting rid of "rulers."
IMO we often forget the tremendous significance of this distinction. Although we fall far short of it in practice.